


Long Live the King!

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Godzilla - All Media Types, 地縛少年花子くん | Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun | Toilet-bound Hanako-kun (Manga)
Genre: (like.... specifically how Mothra keeps getting reborn), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Godzilla, Artistic Liberties Taken, F/M, Gen, Reincarnation, but also (and more dramatically), idk if the violence is really that gory but I'm tagging it just in case, that isn't an official tag but I'm using it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: As long as she could remember, Nene Yashiro had dreamt of her own wings on fire.(JSHK/Godzilla crossover.  I'm gonna say I was mostly inspired by "Godzilla: The King of Monsters," but it doesn't follow that timeline/logic exactly by any means.)
Relationships: Godzilla/Mothra (Kaiju), Hanako | Yugi Amane/Yashiro Nene
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	Long Live the King!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jericho_Pryce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jericho_Pryce/gifts).



> Okay...... Jericho_Pryce loves Godzilla, and it seems like Hanako also loves Godzilla, so........ I started this a long time ago ahahaha. Jericho, you were warned!!! Everybody else, I hope you enjoy this, and that you're staying safe/doing well!!!
> 
> Thank you!!!

As long as she could remember, Nene Yashiro had dreamt of her own wings on fire. 

Don’t get me wrong — Nene didn’t have wings normally, or anything magical like that. Haha, no, of course not! She had thick ankles and a wobbly grade point average; she had a spot on the Gardening Club at her university, and a book full of embarrassing journal entries under her dorm room bed. But even so: there was the fire, and there was the city falling to ash all around her. Time and time again, they returned, and for a while they felt like all there was in the world. There were moth wings shifting like the cosmos, too. Moth wings like the kaleidoscope Nene’d stared through for hours as a kid, making sure to face it towards her living room lamp so it would glow like stained glass. Why hadn’t she wanted to look away? There was something just on the tip of her tongue all the time. There was something Nene was supposed to remember. 

Nene first learned about the creature called Mothra in high school, when her dad was watching back through old Titan attack footage, a shadow over his face. His hands were laced loosely together, prayerful or helpless or something else Nene didn’t know how to name. Mothra drifted over a raging world, on that TV screen, ethereal and ancient, reborn again. She shielded her king with wings like Nene’s old kaleidoscope, and the king dripped sizzling dark water, dragged from deep unknowable oceans. Monsters, making war with another hungrier monster. 

Nene knelt on the floor by the couch, letting the inhuman screams wash over her, watching the buildings fall. It hurt her chest. All those people, all that death. Somehow, she thought she knew that even the king — even Godzilla, cold-eyed lizard that he was — could roar at Mothra to get herself out of danger. Somehow she thought she knew that Godzilla snarled with heartbreak when she burned. She had come to help him in this fight, and... this time at least... he had come to help humanity. Not every time, of course. The Titans were a touchy subject. But Mothra smirked at the King of Monsters before she died. She would come back. She murmured that she’d see him again, and sooner than he thought. Bye, now. 

Mothra hadn’t been sighted in generations, truth be told — Nene’s dad was watching this footage because Godzilla himself tended to hang around the waters near a place where he was gonna have to move the family for work. He was trying to look his fear, his guilt, in the face. 

“Godzilla’s been protecting humanity, lately,” Nene’s dad told her. “If I think you’re in any danger, we’re on the first train away from the coast. Okay, hun?”

“I know,” Nene said. “He’s been trying to keep the balance. That’s his job.” Why did she say that? But she knew it was true. Godzilla had been given that role — how long ago was it? The world had been so young. He’d wanted Mothra to be more careful than he was, because her wings could burn. But when she called to him, he answered, every time. When he needed help, she knew. He fought for the balance as well as he could, but the challenges just kept coming. 

Maybe Nene’s father had given her an odd look, then, but Nene didn’t glance away from the screen. That was years ago, now. That was before Nene attended Titan Zoology classes and learned about how Mothra had been reborn countless times, inheriting her memories back over the millennia; about how Godzilla’s temples waited under the waves, from a time when he’d been literally worshipped (“Don’t get a big head or anything,” floated through Nene’s mind unbidden); about how many, many, many Titans there were to keep precariously balanced. Infighting could level human cities and leave ecosystems splintered apart. Ravenous hunger could drive Titans to try and hunt one another down. 

Now that the Titans were restless again, Godzilla was always roaming around, dragging himself out of deep oceans to keep the peace. He spoke through bioluminescent flickering across the darkness of his scales, sometimes, it had recently been discovered... humans used to be able to understand him so much more completely, once upon a time. It was said a young man with bioluminescence under his skin taught them, with teasing smiles and a drawling, sing-song voice. He appeared in some of the mythology, anyway, and in some anime interpretations of Titan lore floating around and trying to be edgy. Ancient cave drawings usually depicted him with his arms folded behind his back and his head tilted slightly to the side. Challenging the viewer, and watching them with eyes like polished coins. Like magma under the seas. 

(Nene wanted to call him “Amane,” but she wasn’t completely sure why. Or... she knew. She _knew_ , but —)

Nene listened to personal accounts of Titan attacks and felt physically ill, sometimes — it was too real, wasn’t it? The flames, the fear, the end of things. Nene watched recordings of Titan battles with the rest of her class and told herself she couldn’t possibly understand any of the flickering lights along Godzilla’s back. Threats and warnings, worry and frustration. She shouldn’t be able to understand them at all. Nene was gonna graduate in just a couple months, and she’d be fine; she’d meet the dashing, considerate modern-day prince of her dreams, eventually, probably, hopefully, and be able to make good money with all her gathered knowledge of Titans. Companies were always looking for researchers, helping to adapt cryptic, impossible Titan biology into fuel, into miracle cures or whatever else. Nene could do that, and she’d be as normal as she could be. Normal-ish. 

Surely. Right? She had a dorm room with her best friend Aoi, at the moment. She had a painting class where she was working on a series called Still Life with Summer Vegetables. 

As long as she could remember, Nene Yashiro had dreamt of her own wings on fire. Sometimes she wondered if the rest of Mothra’s memories would come back to find her, one of these days; sometimes... don’t tell anyone... she lay awake at night completely sure they would, and the King of Monsters might ask her what took so long. He’d thought maybe she wouldn’t be reborn again, this time — he’d thought maybe now, for the first time since the world was young, he was really and truly alone. 

(“You aren’t alone!” drifted through Nene’s mind, then. A voice that was hers, and not quite hers, too. Maybe a version of herself that she’d become, soon enough? “You’re never alone, okay? I’m always coming back for you.” 

“You don’t have to. You _could_ live your human life,” answered a shy, mumbling voice. She knew he was ducking his head, then; she couldn’t quite remember his face. She had kissed him, before, in other lives. She wanted to kiss him again, and mess up his hair, and tell him it was okay to want things. Okay to want things beyond keeping the balance of their world, that is; okay to be sad that she kept dying and dying, and he would grow moss between his scales. As a human-enough man, Nene could cup his cheeks in her hands. A ripple of flustered bioluminescence would run down his skin, if she did, and he’d lean closer to her without realizing it. 

“I don’t look much like I used to, do I?” she might have asked him.

“No, but your wings are just the same. It’s... it’s so good to see you.”

“They made anime about you, you know. Wanna watch it?”)

Nene closed her eyes, and braced herself. She wondered if a chrysalis could ever form over her skin; she wondered if Godzilla would be waiting, if she took one of those fancy deep sea subs down to his temples carved under the ocean; she wondered if an eternity of memories would melt her human mind. She wondered if she was imagining all of this, and she should spend less time worrying about Titans, more time thinking about her Calculus final. 

She remembered her wings on fire, and shuddered. Wrapped her arms around herself under the sheets.


End file.
